Ten Tips for a PACE Bowl Team

Create a file (which must be kept secure) of Checkups and Self Tests from completed PACEs 1073-1144 in math, English and literature, science, social studies, Bible, and electives. Use these as a source of questions for study and practice by your PACE Bowl team.

Select your team members based not only on their PACE level and ability, but on their comfort level in competing before an audience and under a degree of pressure. It is more difficult to remember the answers in the “heat” of competition.

Practice as a team, learning to think quickly, hit the buzzer (if not a buzzer system, an object that the student can hit as if it were the buzzer), and answer the questions from the practice file. (See #1)

Decide which two subject areas each team member will be responsible for when answering “toss-up” questions – math, English, science, social studies – so they can key in on those questions. Remember, any team member can answer elective and Bible questions.

Arrange an actual competition with a second “team” from your school (you may enter only one team at Student Convention) or from another school in your area. This will permit your students to become familiar with the format, timing, and scoring of a match.

Determine your team’s spokesperson and allow your team to practice conferring and communicating the answer to the spokesperson in a timely manner, as they would on a “bonus” question.

Remember that PACE Bowl is both an elimination and a performance event and will count toward a student’s maximum events permitted in these two areas for all four team members.

Instruct team members not to talk among themselves or to make side remarks during a match. The only communication permitted is conferring on “bonus” questions.

Your team may take one sixty-second “time out” during a PACE Bowl match, before a “toss-up” question, to be used in a manner similar to a “time out” in an athletic competition (e.g. to communicate as a team, strategize, regroup mentally, etc.). The team’s spokesperson may call for the “time out.”

Have your team pray together before each practice and each competition.